Many people outside of “the process” do not realize that Florida’s legislature is a part-time body. As most readers of this post will know, Florida’s lawmakers are “citizen legislators” who hold regular jobs outside of the Capitol.

What jobs are typical of legislators? Do professional differences exist between the parties? Does the House or Senate have more lawyers? We scraped data from the Clerk’s manual, categorized the jobs listed by industry, and found some interesting items.

- The top three overall fields represented in the legislature are legal, business and real estate.

- 1 in 4 legislators are lawyers and they account for 32% of Democrats and 23% of Republicans.

- Business people comprise 20% of the Republican Caucus but only 9% of the Democratic Caucus.

- Each party has six members who come from education related fields.

Explore the interactive chart below where you can hover over any area for more info and filter using the drop downs. To see full details (member name, occupation, etc) simply click “Show Data” icon in the mouse over box.

The mantra of “jobs” has been echoing through the halls of the capitol since the last days of the Crist era.

Governor Rick Scott has hung his hat on being “The Jobs Governor.” But has it worked? Our hypothesis on the virtues of jobs (private sector jobs, specifically) is twofold:

1. Gainfully employed people are satisfied with the status quo and will support incumbents.

2. Gainfully employed people want to keep more of their earnings and will vote for Republican tax policies.

We designed a simple test of the jobs hypothesis. We looked at private sector employment in every 2002 and 2012 drawn House and Senate district and plotted it alongside Scott’s performance in that seat. The resulting interactive graph (and more analysis) is below. Be sure to explore the filter and mouse over tool tips.

- Interestingly, the results show that private sector employment is negatively related to Scott’s performance. In fact, for every 1% gain in private sector employment, the Governor lost .30% of the vote share.

- Or, we could be seeing that voters with jobs just are not motivated by a jobs message. An interesting paradox for a Governor who is focused on creating jobs.

- The relationship here is somewhat weak, suggesting that the portion of voters employed in private sector jobs actually had very little bearing on Scott’s 2010 outcome.

- The voter perception of jobs being created may be more valuable than the same voter holding a private sector job. Example: Retirees or active duty-military who vote conservatively but do not actually hold private employment.

In the coming weeks, we will look at more demographic and economic factors and how they will impact the 2014 gubernatorial contest.

Email Signup

Contact Us

About Decision MediaWorks

Decision MediaWorks

Decision MediaWorks specializes in turning data into insight. We use the latest in data science to bring clarity to the hard choices made by anyone who follows Florida's unique politics, public policy and culture.

Our focus is on delivering insights that make sense out of publicly available data. We believe the success of any data science project rests on the ability to clearly communicate insights to decision makers.

Questions answered. Tough decisions made easier. That's what we do.

About Joe Clements

Joe Clements, President

Joe's first foray in analytics was estimating the amount of carbon stored in one acre of Ethiopian scrub brush as an intern for the United Nations World Food Programme.

After working for several years in political campaigns and as a legislative staffer, Joe saw that decision making is hard but that good data science (and the presentation of data) can make many decisions easier.

Joe was a Truman and Rhodes scholar nominee at the University of North Florida where he graduated with a degree in public relations. He is currently completing graduate coursework in political management and computer science at Florida State University.

In his non-data science life, Joe is married to Sara, fosters dogs, shoots guns, never misses a Jacksonville Jaguars game and tries to play golf.